‘Dad?’ Josh said tentatively, bringing Nick’s focus crashing back to the present.
‘Yes, lit—? Yes, mate?’ Again, he’d almost said little guy.
He didn’t like mate. It didn’t feel right. What else was there? Love. Sweetheart. Darling. Not those either. He hated it that his son was five years old and he didn’t know how to find the right affectionate nickname.
‘Can I please have a snack?’
‘Sure.’ There should be a snack cart coming along soon, but Nick wasn’t going to rely on Josh liking airline food. He was absurdly grateful at the mere fact that his son had spoken to him. ‘You want the muesli bar or the cheese dipper?’
‘Muesli bar.’
‘And something to drink?’
‘Just water.’ He sounded good now, no wheeze left at all.
Miranda appeared. ‘If you need the bathroom, now would be a good time, Joshie. Before the aisle gets blocked by the food service.’
Joshie, Nick thought. That worked. That he could say, without feeling that he was somehow faking his way through it.
Thank you, Miranda Carlisle. Again…
They must have talked and kissed and sat on those steps until two or three in the morning, learning about each other, by which time the party had been sagging and ebbing into the usual late night dark kind of feeling, people leaving in twos and threes, warm bodies slumped together on the couch, a touch-and-go moment when an irritable neighbour might have called the police, only someone shut down the pounding music just in time.
‘Where could we go?’ he asked. ‘I want to be with you. I don’t think I ever want to let you go.’ He meant it, at the time, more than he’d ever meant anything in his life. Lord, in hindsight the nakedness of it still brought hints of blind panic.
‘My place,’ she offered at once. It was a shared house. Fellow med students, but they’d gone north to the Gold Coast, she said, for their version of this end-of-exams party night.
Miranda made it clear that the two of them would be alone—a typical gesture of giving, he thought. No one to overhear, no one to hide from, no one to ever know, no matter how late they slept in.
You’re safe, Nick.
He knew he never would have made himself that vulnerable, offering ‘my place’ as if it was the easiest thing in the world. He protected his own space like it was some kind of dark secret, even though it was nothing out of the ordinary, just a ground-level studio flat next to the garage, beneath his landlord’s suburban home.
The way he’d protected his heart until that night, with her.
When a dam broke, it flooded…
They made love.
He still remembered odd details. They stood out in his mind like bits of coloured glass catching the sun. Miranda’s dark hair sweeping across his chest—it had been longer back then. Her laugh, all creamy and secret and just for him. The confessions he’d made afterwards, while they’d lain in each other’s arms until morning, not sleeping at all.
Those confessions had felt liberating at the time, a huge weight off his mind, gateway to a new freedom he hadn’t imagined before. ‘I’m not sure if I care enough about people to be a good doctor. I have the medicine down, but how do you care the right amount?’ ‘I don’t think I really love my parents the way I should. My father is so…so rigid, and my mother gives in to everyone.’ ‘Stupidity makes me angry. And weakness. And sneakiness. All those things. I pull back. I just don’t deal with it. Is that showing strength, to pull back? Or am I being weak, too?’
He wondered now, as Miranda jumped up once more from the narrow aircraft seat beside him, if she was still as calmly trusting, if she still wore her heart on her sleeve, if she ever said I love you the very first night.
He didn’t.
He never had since.
Where was the sense in making yourself that vulnerable? he’d decided. And yet holding back, the way he had in his marriage to Anna, hadn’t brought him happiness. With any luck, she wouldn’t be seated beside him on the next flight— the final hop out to Wallaby Island, on a propeller-driven plane.
As the larger jet flight began its descent into Cairns, the ‘Fasten Seat Belt’ sign confined Miranda in place and she felt so aware of Nick—the forbidding silence broken only by occasional rather wooden comments to Josh, the strong shoulder that encroached a little into her own space. Hadn’t these airline seats grown even smaller and more cramped since the last time she’d flown?
It was so stupid. She really wanted to say to him, So why did you never phone me, when you promised that you would? After ten years, you just didn’t ask that. After ten years, you already knew.
There were basically only two possibilities.
Either he had only wanted to get her into bed, and hadn’t minded lying to her for the sake of that goal. ‘I love you, Miranda.’
Or in the cold light of day, he hadn’t found her nearly as captivating as the party in the moonlight had led him to think.
At the time, she’d believed his sincerity absolutely, hadn’t even thought to take his phone number as insurance. He had said he would phone, he had said he loved her, which meant he would and did, so she hadn’t needed his number. When a day went by, then two, then a week, the pain and questions started to slow-burn inside her and lasted for months.
Had she completely misread that sense of rightness and promise? Why had she trusted him so easily?
Because, despite her stellar performance in her studies, she had been as dumb as a rock in some areas, and one of those areas was men. There was a causal link to the apparent contradiction. She had been clueless when it had come to men because she’d done so well in her studies.
Success in medicine took hard work. Hard work left little time for other activities. Other activities included hanging out with female friends, meeting men and talking about the men in great detail with the female friends.
She’d been the beloved only child of older parents. She’d grown up too sheltered and too eager to give her heart. She honestly hadn’t known that some men were love rats, and that you couldn’t always tell who the love rats were at first—or even second or third—glance. Shutting herself away to study, she hadn’t had enough opportunity to experience the bruising reality of the real world. She’d stayed far too innocent for far too long. Was probably too innocent still. Too innocent and too nice. How did you get tougher? Did she want to? She hadn’t realised that matters of the heart required as much prior study as an anatomy exam.
Oh, and there was another reason why she’d believed the I love you thing.
Because she’d said the same words back to him, all night, and had meant them from the bottom of her heart.
‘Joshie, we need to put the cars away now, so we can put your tray table up,’ Nick said to his son.
No reply.
‘Josh, are you listening?’
‘Is this the kids’ camp?’ He twisted around for a moment, and might have been talking to Miranda, not to his dad. She felt Nick stiffen beside her, and stayed silent, leaving the conversation to unfold between father and son, the way it should. ‘I can see buildings. They’re tiny!’
‘No, this isn’t the camp,’ Nick answered, ‘because we have to go on the other plane first, remember? That’s Cairns you can see.’
‘And I can see ocean and sand, and shapes in the water.’
‘Let me look…’ Nick leaned past Josh. ‘Wow!’
The aircraft banked to line up its approach and Miranda
caught a glimpse of tropical yellow and blue, sun glinting on water, and lush rainforest greenery. The promise of the water, the warmth and the reef washed over her like a delectable scent in the air and for a moment she had absolute faith that they were all going to have a great time.
She was too adept at faith, though, too nice for her own good.
Hold back, Miranda. Keep your heart safe. Haven’t you learned that yet?
Well, if she hadn’t, she had Nick Devlin on hand to remind her.
CHAPTER THREE
‘RIGHT, that’s everything on file,’ Dr Beth Stuart said to Miranda. ‘Your lot and Benita’s. She’ll be along in a minute, you said.’
‘She’s still getting her group settled. I won’t be surprised if it takes a while.’
‘Well, we won’t wait for her. I’ll show you our set-up, and you probably have questions, Miranda.’
‘At the moment, I’m too impressed to think of them! Speechless, really.’
‘I know. It’s pretty fantastic, isn’t it? Charles says it’s an ill wind—’ Beth interrupted herself. ‘That’s Charles Wetherby, Medical Director, I mean. You’ll meet him. Soon, I expect. He said he’d pop in, and if not he’ll be at dinner in the camp dining room.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Only an hour away. Time’s getting on.’
‘He lives out here? I thought—’
‘He’s based in Crocodile Creek, yes, on the mainland. But this place is his baby, administratively part of the Crocodile Creek Hospital, and he pushed through the rebuilding after the cyclone with amazing speed. That’s what he meant about the ill wind. It took a cyclone to get a state-of-the-art medical centre here, but now it means we can take kids for the camp that we couldn’t have taken in the past because their health was too iffy for us to handle.’
‘Were you here when the cyclone hit?’
‘No, I’ve only been working here for a few weeks.’
Miranda matched this statement with Beth’s use of the word ‘we.’ Clearly she’d settled in and become attached to the place very fast. She was a slightly built woman in her thirties, with typical brunette colouring, hair kept practical and straight and chin length.
‘I live in one of the old camp cabins that survived the cyclone. Somewhat primitive but that’s fine. It’s supposed to be a temporary arrangement, but I might start kicking and screaming if they try to move me somewhere supposedly better. There’s something about this place, and my little cabin. Good for the soul. And I love the kids!’ A bright grin came and went, showing a different side to her personality.
Beth seemed outgoing at first glance, but Miranda wondered about the stream of easy chat. Was there more beneath the surface? In her experience, there usually was. Most women, once they’d passed thirty, had a challenge or two behind them.
‘They didn’t used to have a full-time doctor on staff,’ Beth was saying. ‘The medical centre was much more modest, but now we’re effectively a hospital and I’m the doctor who runs it.’
‘Not on your own?’
‘No, we roster people across from Crocodile Creek. Charles himself. He’s the one I report to, officially. Dr Jamieson, Dr Lopez. Several others. You’ll meet some of them. Oh, this is him, I think.’
Miranda hadn’t heard anything. But then the door opened as if by magic—no, by a little girl, she saw a moment later— and a man in a wheelchair manoeuvred his way through, followed by a woolly, goldy-brown dog. He smiled at her— the man, not the dog—and they did the whole greetings and introductions thing.
‘And the dog is Garf,’ Charles finished.
‘Garf is gorgeous. What breed?’
‘Labradoodle. They’re good for the asthma kids because they don’t shed. He’s six years old.’ Charles looked to be somewhere in his late forties or fifties, greying slightly at the temples, with lines deepening at the corners of his well- shaped mouth and serious-yet-twinkly dark eyes. The little girl was Lily, but where she fitted into the picture neither Charles nor Beth explained.
Charles seemed preoccupied. ‘We have dignitaries descending from Tuesday onwards for the official opening,’ he was saying, ‘and I have—’ He stopped, looked at Lily.
Lily was busy linking all the paper clips from the tray on the desk into a long silver chain. Much more interesting than listening to adult conversation.
‘Can you watch Lily for a minute, Beth? Unless…’ He looked at Miranda. ‘We’re staying in one of the camp cabins until after the opening. Dinner’s up soon. Would you be able to take Lily across with you, Dr Carlisle, and I’ll meet you there a little later on?’
‘Of course,’ Miranda told him politely. ‘But would she… um…?’
‘Go with you?’ he mouthed back, understanding her hesitation. He murmured, ‘Yes, almost too easily. Jill and I worry about it.’ Charles turned to the child. ‘Lily, you’re going to go with Dr Carlisle and meet all the camp kids. That’ll be much more fun than coming to the hotel.’
Lily nodded and dropped her paper-clip chain. She darted ahead of Charles so she could open the office door for him.
‘Be good for Dr Carlisle, won’t you?’ he said. ‘Make friends with the camp kids.’
‘Can I take Garf?’
‘No, I’d better have him with me,’ Charles told her. ‘See you later, OK?’
He manoevred himself out the door and down the wheelchair ramp that ran across the front of the brand-new building, and a moment later man and woolly golden dog were out of sight.
‘Lily, ready to go with Dr Carlisle?’ Beth asked.
Lily nodded.
Miranda thought about suggesting the use of her first name, but her patients didn’t call her that, so she probably should¬ n’t offer the informality to Lily either. She said a see-you-around kind of goodbye to Beth and left the brand-new building. Lily knew the way to go. She skipped on ahead, while Miranda tried to orientate herself.
They passed some of the original cabins, which had been left sufficiently intact to warrant repairing after the cyclone. Two of them had had their windows left unglazed and seemed to have been fitted out for pottery and painting. The third cabin, set slightly behind the first two, must be Beth’s. Miranda glimpsed nests of colourful cushions on a squishy old couch and saw rows of shells and other beachcomber bric-a-brac arranged on the veranda railing. The place must have the most gorgeous views of the ocean…
Farther along, camouflaged by the tropical greenery, which was already recovering well from the cyclone’s damage, were the newly built eco-cabins and camp dormitories, as well as the dining hall and activity rooms. Lily pricked up her ears at the sound of children’s voices, and Miranda saw a couple of departing parents being ferried by electric golf cart down to the luxury hotel resort on the other side of the island. Not all of the accompanying parents had elected to stay at the camp itself.
Nick was staying here, though.
He and Josh had one of the two-bedroom cabins set off to the far side of the cluster of camp buildings. Miranda saw them come out onto their veranda. Josh was holding himself apart, fiddling with something he’d picked up. Probably a shell. He didn’t look at Nick. His little legs looked so thin and small below a pair of baggy blue shorts.
Nick watched him and didn’t seem to know what to say. He looked tense and awkward and that phrase love rat that had come into her head earlier didn’t seem to fit him at all. ‘Don’t you want to, Josh?’ Miranda heard him say. ‘There’s time.’
No reply.
‘Listen, yo
u have to talk to me, or I don’t know what you want. Go to the beach before dinner? Or stay here? Are you too hungry? Thirsty?’
Josh caught sight of Miranda at that moment. He grinned and clambered down the wooden steps, still without having given his father an answer. ‘Can we go to the beach?’
‘I think your dad just said you could, didn’t he?’ She could see Nick’s feet planted firmly on the wooden veranda as if something had frozen him there. He looked forbidding and not happy, and she didn’t want to say or do the wrong thing. ‘I think Dad wants to scrunch some sand between his toes,’ she finished lightly.
‘Are you going?’ Josh asked her, his gaze steady on her face.
Miranda didn’t know. She had Lily to consider, and Charles Wetherby hadn’t mentioned taking the little girl to the beach.
Beside her, Lily took matters into her own hands. ‘Yep, we’re going. Look, it’s right there.’ Without waiting for any further guidance from the adults, she set off. Nick and Miranda exchanged glances. Josh was looking much happier than he had a minute ago. He scampered in Lily’s wake, and Nick and Miranda accepted their fate and followed.
‘This one’s not from the Melbourne group, is she?’ Nick asked.
‘No, she’s from here. She belongs to Dr Wetherby, I think.’
‘Belongs to him?’
‘I haven’t quite worked their relationship out,’ Miranda confessed.
‘I know how that feels,’ he muttered.
She was about to question the statement, but he didn’t give her a chance. As if wanting to create some distance, he quickened his pace to catch up to the two kids, which meant that Miranda took her first steps onto the beach alone.
It was glorious.
A wide, shallow curve of white sand cupped the tropical water like a rim of fine porcelain. The colour of the ocean was fantastic, shading from light turquoise in the shallows through aquamarine and peacock to a rich, satiny midnight blue out where it was deeper.
The Australian's Desire (Mills & Boon By Request) Page 37